Although my intuition leads me to believe that there is, ultimately,
only one reality -- infinite and eternal -- experience leads me to
believe
that there are as many views or perspectives of that reality as there
are
conscious creatures. Each of us has a different genetic
inheritance,
different health histories, different cultural backgrounds, different
upbringings,
unique individual experiences... and so on. It is a surprise to
me
that we agree about the world as much as we do! Even more:
Our views of reality change over the years and even from moment to
moment
as our situations and moods change. It would seem, at first pass,
that any attempt to reduce these views or perspectives to a few
categories
or types would be doomed before it began!

But then, study of the history of ideas and the development of
individual
minds suggests to me that, perhaps, there are a few clusters we can
point
to -- complexes of ideas that gravitate to each other, perhaps because
they share some logical connectedness that goes beyond individual
variation.

The idea of some number of epistemological “types,” “categories,”
“stages,”
or “levels” is, of course, nothing new. Toynbee, Sorokin, Piaget,
Kohlberg, Perry, and many, many others, have put forth their thoughts
on
the matter -- and I would like to do the same. The following
ideas
are an extension of my Perspectives Theory and were inspired by the
work
of Rachel Lauer. To be succinct, I have come to believe that we
can
separate out seven such perspectives and that we can further organize
them
into three broader categories as well as into a rough developmental
hierarchy.

The autistic perspective

The first perspective I call the autistic. I don’t believe
that
anyone is ever completely involved in this perspective, but it is best
seen in infants, autistic children, and severely psychotic
adults.
On the other hand, we all slip into this perspective from time to time,
most obviously when we are dreaming, but also when we engage in
instinctive,
automatic, or defensive behavior.

A person taking the autistic view believes that their personal
subjective
perspective is, in fact, the only perspective, and that, to the extent
that the consciousness of others is recognized at all, everyone sees
reality
this same way. It is, in other words, egocentric and
self-oriented,
even solipsistic. In infants (and one might presume, in animals),
the autistic perspective is one that stays very close to immediate
reality
as presented by the senses and feelings. In older children and
adults,
it is likely to include a perfect faith in one’s own construction of
reality,
including all the differentiations one has learned. In the case
of
the psychotic, those differentiations might include some very
sophisticated
constructions developed prior to the slide back into autism.

“Symptoms” of autistic perception and cognition in normal children
and
adults include ideas of magic, especially magical efficacy, and
animism,
i.e., the idea that other entities, including animals, plants, and even
physical phenomena, also perceive and respond to events as the person
does.

The authoritarian perspective

The authoritarian view is a common one -- perhaps the most common
one.
It is a step above the autistic in that, although it is a subjective
view,
it takes into account the views of others. In fact, it may be
said
to absorb the views of others. Developmentally, the simple fact
of
living among other human beings leads one out of the autistic into the
authoritarian. The child must inevitably broaden his or her
perspective
to encompass that of “significant others,” if only to survive. In
most circumstances, this process is enormously simplified by the fact
that
all of a child's immediate contacts share most of a single social
reality.

This is the perspective that most fully accepts social
reality.
This means, however, that an authoritarian person accepts only one
social
reality, and understands it as universal. Someone who does not
accept
the same social reality is seen as either an infant or insane.
When
the social reality is threatened, either by another social reality or
by
more immediate experiences, the tendency is for defensive mechanisms to
engage, although further epistemological development is another
possibility.

Most children, as well as the adults of a primitive, isolated, or
highly
structured traditional societies, will take this position. There
is a tendency to legalistic thinking and an inordinate respect for
tradition,
even when painful. Further, authoritarians tend to classify
events,
objects, and even people in pigeon-hole types or categories, with
relatively
few gradations. And they tend to believe in universal dualities
--
black vs white, good vs bad, us vs them... -- with little room for “in
between” or “both.”

Both the autistic and the authoritarian views are “subjective“
views,
in the sense that they believe in and value the interpretation, whether
individual or social, of experience more than the experience
itself.
In the autistic, the value of events relative to individual needs and
desires
is more important than truth as some of the higher perspectives would
understand
it. In the authoritarian, the weight of valuing has simply
shifted
to the social surround.

In either case, at least when we consider people beyond the
infancy
stage, there is in addition a particular faith in the power of words,
which
is in keeping with their attachment to constructed reality.

The rationalistic perspective

The next three perspectives (rationalistic, mechanistic, and
cybernetic)
together constitute the “objective” views, in contrast to the previous
“subjective” ones. They share the idea that truth has an objective
existence
to be discovered outside of either personal or social realities.
Developmentally
(and historically) speaking, we see in these objective perspectives an
acknowledgement that we may be mistaken, as individuals and as
societies.

For this reason alone, it is not surprising that we only see these
objective
perspectives among the exceptional intellects and the well-traveled of
traditional societies, and that these perspectives only become more
common
in multi-cultural societies, especially the world-spanning cultures of
the last few centuries. Even then, these perspectives are not
available
to everyone, and may very well be defended against. It should
also
not be surprising that, in modern societies, it is still only the child
in the second half of elementary school that begins to exhibit these
objectivist
qualities.

The rationalistic perspective values reason, logic, technicalities,
words, and, if sufficiently sophisticated, mathematics. It is an
idealistic perspective in that the objective truth it seeks is held to
be contained by the mind. When someone brought up in the
authoritarian
tradition is exposed to other social realities beyond his or her own,
he
or she is most likely to begin by seeking commonalities among those
social
realities, commonalities that inhere in the words and other symbolic
approaches
of the societies or cultures involved. These are, by nature,
psychological
or
ideal.

Developmentally, the late elementary school child and early
adolescent
are the best examples, with all their well known tendency to argument
and
idealism. Historically, the ancient Greeks, most especially
Pythagoras
and Plato, are the best examples, although Aristotle, with his enormous
contributions to logical thought, can hardly be left out. We
might
also include the rationalists -- Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz --
although
much of their philosophies include mechanistic, cybernetic, and higher
epistemological qualities. Likewise, Piaget has certain qualities
we could call rationalistic, but those are even more supplemented by
other,
higher perspectives.

The mechanistic perspective

The mechanistic perspective is the perspective we find in classical
science: Though not disdainful of logic and mathematics, it views
truth as something to be discovered outside the mind, in the
world.
It is empirical in emphasis rather than rationalistic, and
materialistic
rather than idealistic. In fact, it tends to denigrate the ideal,
even while it seeks universal laws! It, more than the
rationalistic
or the cybernetic, is the most likely view to condemn subjectivism and
to emphatically strive for a pure objectivism. Since the goals of
the mechanistic perspective involve independence from all subjectivity,
it tends to focus on quantity as the only significant quality, and on
cause
and effect (even when understood as non-necessary) over all other
relations.
And these emphases in turn make the mechanistic view notably
reductionistic,
especially when it addresses psychological phenomena.

The mechanistic view often goes so far as to deny the existence of
non-material
qualities, even consciousness itself. This is in strong contrast
to the rationalistic view, which instead tends to denigrate matter,
considering
it corrupt or degenerate, and sometimes dismissing it altogether.
Unlike the cybernetic and higher perspectives, however, the mechanistic
view seems oblivious to the contradictions involved in these denials,
the
effects of the observer on the observed, and the nature of the
scientific
approach as an epistemology. This commonly results in a tendency
to replace older explanatory structures, without consideration of the
possible
truths they may contain, with the “religion of science” we might call
scientism.

The mechanistic is most likely to be found, in people growing up in
a modern society, among adolescents and young adults. It is a
youthful,
exuberant perspective, with a great deal of power and practical
application.
Much of the successful side (and some of the dark side) of the modern
world
is due to mechanistic thinking.

The cybernetic perspective

The cybernetic tends to be the most mature of the three objective
views
because it requires certain realizations that are rare among
rationalistic
and mechanistic people: The cybernetic person has fully
recognized
that the observer influences the observed, that there is no empirical
demonstration
of the existence of matter, that there is some sort of reality to
non-material
events, and that the mechanistic understanding of cause and effect is
far
too limiting -- too linear -- an understanding of relationships.

In some senses, the cybernetic view is a synthesis of the
rationalistic
and the mechanistic. Accepting both reason and empiricism, and
both
material and non-material realities, it adopts a philosophy of neutral
monism (or similar views such as pluralism or double-aspectism) and a
methodology
of modeling. The experimental method is now viewed not as a
testing
of causal connections but as an effort at comparing the functioning of
a model with the functioning of the larger reality. Originally,
that
model was a verbal theory, but as the cybernetic view develops beyond
the
mechanistic, models begin to include other structures and their
processes,
the most obvious being the use of computer simulations.

Our own society is being rapidly pulled into the cybernetic
perspective,
and we can see its impact in the prevalence of systems approaches in
all
fields of science. We see ecology as a (or is it the?) major
approach
in biology, a revolution in computer and software design, the
cognitive
revolution in psychology, and so on. We see everywhere an
acknowledgement
of the implications of relativity and uncertainty, both in their
“physics”
senses and their more generalized senses. Perhaps the best sign
of
the dominance of the cybernetic approach is the use of the word
information,
which is, pretty clearly, the preferred term for that neutral substance
which is neither material nor mental.

In psychology, this cybernetic approach is the newest wave after the
collapse of the highly mechanistic behaviorist tradition. There
is
great pride being taken in the impact that psychology is having on
other
fields, although the credit may have to go more to linguistics than
psychology.
Nevertheless, it does seem that many humanistic and social science
fields
are now more aware of the psychological side of their fields,
especially
the idea that the observer has a significant impact on the observed --
e.g. that societies and cultures and art and literature and music
and so on are “in the eyes of the beholder.”

Even the idea that logic and truth are psychological qualities has
become
popular. Unfortunately, few seem to recognize that making logic
dependent
on the individual means there is no true logic at all -- including the
logic it took to come to the conclusion that logic is psychological to
begin with!

Another criticism of the cybernetic perspective is that, by turning
to the neutral substance of information, it has turned away from
immediate
experienced reality quite completely. Where is truth? In
the
cybernetic view, it certainly can’t be in the colorful, noisy,
warm-blooded,
emotional world we experience directly. It must instead be in the
cold gray on-off world of information! Even the mechanistic view
has its solid material, and the rationalistic world its forms and
images.

Although the rationalistic, mechanistic, and cybernetic are rather
equal
in terms of complexity, they do tend to arise, both historically and in
individual development, in the order given. The rationalistic
view
allows easier transition from the authoritarian valuing of symbols; the
mechanistic is the most representative of the three (so perhaps less
“contaminated”
by authoritarian and epistemic perspectives); and the cybernetic begins
to acknowledge the problems that the epistemic attempts to address.

The epistemic perspective

The last two perspectives can best be understood as a synthesis of
the
subjective views and the objective views. The epistemic
approach
accepts the immediate experienced reality of individual consciousness
as
true, yet recognizes that there are as many of these “realities” as
there
are perceivers. The true, ultimate reality is therefore
understood
as the sum of all these perspectives, plus much that is
unperceived.
Unlike the objectivist approaches, which insist that we subtract our
subjectivity
from our observations to arrive at an ultimate reality much reduced
from
experience, the epistemic view sees ultimate reality as all views added
together, and then some!

The perspective, then, could be labeled intersubjective, rather than
subjective or objective, or we could use the term
phenomenological.
Whatever label we give it, it is accepting of multiple perceived
realities
and deals well with the difficulties of relativity and uncertainty, yet
maintains a “faith” (which is nonetheless founded empirically and
rationally)
in ultimate reality. If it isn’t yet clear to the reader, this is
the perspective adopted by Perspectives Theory itself.

There are, however, some negative points to the epistemic
approach:
It is, for example, far less “efficient” than the mechanistic or
cybernetic
approaches, because it tends to shy away from the kind of closure
required
for action. The epistemic person often has very little need for
closure,
and will tend to continue to wait for more views on the matter.
Although
this is may be a virtue in regard to psychological or sociological
understanding,
it may be an unnecessary drag in technological sciences and
issues.
In other words, epistemic people may not be terribly practical.

They may also appear authoritarian. Since all views have some
value, they may tend to support a particular view, perhaps a minority
position,
to the point of seeming dogmatic. However, when others begin to
see
their point, they may very well switch their allegiance to another
position.
So then they appear indecisive or equivocal, if not argumentative or
contrary.
There is a lot to be valued here, however: What they are really
exhibiting
is their openness and tolerance.

The epistemic is rather naturally liberal. Another potential
flaw,
then, is what I call the liberal fallacy: All alternative
perspectives
are equally valuable and deserve equal defense. Liberals in all
fields
often find themselves defending fringe positions and people of unusual,
if not psychotic, character. This then undermines their otherwise
sophisticated and generous positions on issues. A psychologist,
for
example, who believes that the schizophrenic’s view of reality must be
respected in order to be understood runs the risk of being considered
psychotic
himself by his colleagues. Likewise, the person of liberal
politics
may find he or she is supporting the rights of others that he or she
would
otherwise find quite unsavory. Another way of putting it is that
people, in all the previous perspectives, tend to move to a single
clear
position, even so far as to say “this is the way it is.” The
epistemic
perspective is the first that tends to avoid such conclusions.

The transcendental perspective

There is one more perspective I can see, even though I’d be the
first
to admit that I am rarely, if ever, “in” it: the transcendental
perspective.
It is even more “open,” “impractical,” and “flaky” than the epistemic,
from the perspective of most of modern society, although primitive and
traditional societies seem more accepting of it. It
involves,
as the name implies, transcending the multiple perspectives of the
epistemic
and coming into contact with the ultimate reality. This is done
by
stripping away constructed reality altogether, through various
techniques,
most especially meditation, and concentrating on immediate
reality.
This ultimately involves the diminution of desire and self. That
means moving closer and closer to an unconscious state while retaining
the ability to retain the experience. In a very real sense, it is
a matter of dying -- or almost dying -- and returning to everyday
reality
with a new perspective on life --- the transcendental perspective!

Since eastern traditions have made quite an impact on the west in
the
last century or so, quite a number of words have become current as
labels
for this perspective: satori, buddhahood, enlightenment, nirvana,
cosmic consciousness, and so on. A particularly good label is
Maslow’s
peak experiences, in that it distances the phenomenon from particular
religious
practices and philosophical points of view, and especially recognizes
that
the experience is one that normal people can have in their everyday
lives,
not one only available to monks seated in the lotus position. It
describes any experience in which one loses one’s sense of individual
separateness
and feels instead a strong sense of union with all consciousness, life,
the universe, or God.

A couple of things should be made clear about the transcendental
perspective:
One is that it is, like the autistic, more a direction than a
stage.
One simply can’t stay there and continue to exist. It is more an
attitude that is reinforced by brief and occasional experiences of
transcendence.
Another is that, by its very nature, the transcendental perspective is
not one amenable to much discussion. Words and other symbols are
part of the problem of constructed reality, in that we tend to reify
them
and then think of them as prior to their referents.

So, although words are not in and of themselves an anathema to
transcendence,
they are potential pitfalls along the path. The very first
chapter
of the Tao te Ching, for example, warns us that the Tao that can be
talked
about isn't the true Tao. And Zen warns its students to never
mistake
the finger that points at the moon for the moon itself.

With those points made, I will take my own advice and cease to
discuss
the transcendental perspective.

It is a good idea to mention at this point that I am not
constructing
these perspectives as hard and fast pigeon holes of personality.
Each of us operates at all these levels, often simultaneously. In
fact, I would suggest that we need to use each of these perspectives at
various times. I don’t want to be epistemic when shoveling snow,
or authoritarian with a client, or mechanistic with my children.
I do want to be autistic in my dreams, transcendental concerning death,
and cybernetic with my computer! Nevertheless, there are likely to be
perspectives
that we are more proficient at, that we use more often, or that we feel
more comfortable in. Perhaps we could visual ourselves as a
string
of pearls, the largest one somewhere in the middle, strung out over the
seven perspectives.

I should also point out that I am not thinking of these as static
either:
We move among these perspectives, and along them to the extent that
they
have a developmental validity. In fact, as you will see, I
believe
that a lack of movement is cause for serious concern!

Morality

Each of the seven perspectives has a view of value -- good and bad
--
as well, which follows pretty clearly from a perspective’s overall
description.
For the autistic perspective, good is what pleases oneself, bad what
hurts.
Morality is a simple, innocent hedonism. The autistic morality is
fairly congruent with Piaget's pre-operational morality, Kohlberg’s
preconventional
level, and Bronfenbrenner’s self-oriented morality.

In the authoritarian view, the good is founded in tradition and in
the
authoritarian promotion of that tradition. As Sorokin would put
it,
this is a morality of absolute principles, usually viewed as being
handed
down to humanity by God. It is similar to Piaget’s concrete
operations
morality, Kohlberg’s conventional level, Bronfenbrenner’s
other-oriented
type, and Perry’s authoritarian stage.

The objective views are similar to Piaget’s formal operations
morality,
Kohlberg’s post-conventional level, and Bronfenbrenner’s
objectively-oriented
morality. Perry’s term for these perspectives is relativism,
which
makes a crucial point about values from the objectivist
perspective:
Since valuing appears to be a subjective thing, the objective
approaches,
being aware that the individual or societal view is limited and likely
biased, tends to be quite confused about values, if they don’t avoid
values
altogether. The tendency is epitomized by the mechanistic view.

The rationalistic perspective is one that focuses on universal
principles.
We can see more clearly here why the rationalistic fits best between
the
authoritarian and the mechanistic: The rationalistic view takes
the
absolutes of various authoritarian perspectives and seeks the
commonalities
among them, ultimately to discover what, presumably, any rational
person
might agree to. There is often the idea, as Sorokin points out,
that
these ultimate principles come from God, while subordinate principles,
accounting for all the varieties of moral systems, come from Man.
Note that this is similar to Kohlberg’s stage of universal principles,
the sixth and final stage of his system. I place it before the
mechanistic
view, which is comparable to Kohlberg’s fifth stage, the stage of the
social
contract.

The mechanistic view is utilitarian, often focused on social
contract.
As Sorokin puts it, morality is relativistic and founded on man-made
principles.
In its extreme form, the mechanistic view sees morality as purely
subjective
and without universality. Moral or value judgments, therefore,
are
a matter of individual taste or social custom, i.e. relative. At
first glance, this may seem rather epistemic, in that the mechanistic
sees
each person’s moral perspective as equally valid. But if you look
closer,
you see that they are equally valid in that they are equally empty of
meaning!
Where there is no God (universal values), anything is permitted!
At its worst, the mechanistic view reduces values to material force --
i.e. might makes right, survival of the fittest, and so on.

The cybernetic view of values is, true to form, an interactive
one.
The impact of the valuer becomes important, and moral judgments are
viewed
as having contexts. It makes a distinction between relativistic
morals
and situated morals. It is this view that I think better accounts
for the highly moral women that Kohlberg’s student, Carol Gilligan,
wrote
about. These women, because they kept moral judgments in the
context
of social expectations, individual pains and pleasures, and so forth,
were
judged by traditional Kohlberg standards as being of rather low moral
development,
conventional (authoritarian) if not lower. Instead, I see
them
as a higher form, approaching the epistemic. However, unlike
Gilligan,
I see this as more advanced than either universal principles or social
contract, and as not at all restricted to women, though certainly more
commonly found among them in our society.

The epistemic perspective views moral value as phenomenological,
that
is, as necessarily involving consciousness, yet having its own
ontological
reality. That is, good is to be found in the interaction of mind
and world, yet is not to be dismissed as therefore somehow unreal --
especially
when you consider that all reality, to the extent that we have anything
to do with it, is a matter of such interaction! Another way to
understand
it is to see goodness (and badness) as another real qualitative
dimension.

While the great majority of differences between cultures or
individuals
have nothing to do with moral judgement, other differences are
moral.
Hence, the epistemic person respects the variety of individual and
social
perspectives, yet does not shy away from recognizing that some
perspectives
are better than others. We could say that the good is a direction in
which
we prefer to move, a direction, perhaps of self-actualization (or even
life-actualization), which is quite real, yet which cannot be expressed
in the form of absolute universal principles.

In terms of day-to-day choices and decisions, I think this approach
works by adopting certain principles as guidelines to action.
Hence,
the epistemic morality at least functions like Perry’s idea of
commitment.
It is also similar to the existentialist idea of the project, in
which one declares a value system (among other things), and commits
oneself
to it. However, it should be noted that existentialism --
especially
in its Sartrean form -- can be terribly relativistic.

Finally, in the transcendental mode of morality, the good is what is
done. It is an expression of one’s intimacy with the universe,
with
the needs of all life, the desire of all consciousness. The good
is an expression, as Spinoza might put it, of God-or-Nature, and
we are capable of recognizing it intuitively. Again, I’m only
speculating
rather than describing when it comes to this perspective.

Development

As mentioned earlier, there is a degree to which these perspectives
can be organized from simplest to most mature, even if each view has
its
situational strengths and weaknesses. Only among the three
objective views is there much room for argument. And certainly,
if
we disregard this taxonomy altogether for a moment, there is a movement
towards a richer, more complex, more encompassing understanding of
reality
throughout life. At least there should be if the person can be
said
to be healthy and self-actualizing.

Movement towards complexity via continued interaction with the world
and adaptation when one’s knowledge fails is an aspect of
self-actualization
which I call elaboration. We can discern two “moments” in this
movement:
differentiation and integration.

In childhood, it seems that differentiation dominates. It is
really
a simple matter of needing to accumulate data before one is even faced
with the task of integrating it. So children, from the adult
perspective,
seem like sponges, absorbing even trivia at astounding rates.
There
is, of course, a great deal of integration going on as well, but it is
not as salient as the simple differentiation.

In adulthood, on the other hand, much of the differentiation our
lives
require has already been accomplished, and integration becomes more
salient,
at least in adults that continue to elaborate. And in a rich and
complex society such as our own, there is even a great deal of pressure
towards integration: Many adults feel a degree of “information
overload,”
and the reduction and simplification of this overload becomes a strong
motivation.

Bringing this back to our taxonomy of perspectives, we can see a
rough
(and only rough) parallel between the perspectives and developmental
ages:
The autistic is the stage of infancy; the authoritarian, early
childhood;
the rationalistic, late childhood; the mechanistic, adolescence; the
cybernetic,
young adulthood; the epistemic, late adulthood; the transcendental, old
age.

Mental Illness

There are innumerable circumstances which lead to a halt or even a
reversal
in the movement towards elaboration. In the developmental sense, these
are a matter of being faced by situations that are too complex to be
dealt
with, either in terms of differentiation or integration. On
a more immediate level, these are situations where knowledge cannot
keep
up with reality, where anticipation fails, yet adaptation is not
immediately
possible. Emotionally, we are talking about episodes of fear that
are not resolved and so lead to continued anxiety and the defensive
maneuvers
that may accompany it, as well as long-term sadness and anger (i.e.,
depression
and hostility).

These situations may be a matter of a single traumatic event or
long-term
problems that could even be rather insignificant were it not for their
continuity or repetition. There are certainly physical problems
that
could have these results, such as the trauma of natural disasters or
the
long-term effects of chronic illness. Most physical events,
however,
have been well-covered by the evolution of genetically based
physiological
mechanisms, and so are fairly well dealt with unless extreme. On
the other hand, traumas and continual incongruencies within the social
reality are more often than not insufficiently addressed by
physiological
mechanisms, even to the point of damaging those mechanisms, as in
psychophysiological
disorders. Because constructed reality is in fact constructed, it
is much more likely to contain within it conflicts with immediate
experience
as well as internal inconsistencies such as the famous “catch 22” or
“damned
if you do -- damned if you don’t.”

Traumas -- social or physical -- are a fairly simple matter, in the
sense that the symptoms (such as phobic responses, compulsive
behaviors,
specific amnesias, etc.) can usually be directly tied to the traumatic
event (although this does not mean they are easily taken care
of!).
I believe many more of our problems derive from the day-to-day
difficulties
of dealing with a reality -- especially a social reality -- that is
beyond
our capacity, that is just a little too complex for us, that is just a
bit too chaotic. In fact, I think the term “chaotic environment”
may cover the great majority of causes for human unhappiness in modern
society, and especially in the less-precisely defined disorders.

In the following examples, it should again be understood that we are
talking about an interaction of physical and social environments with
specific
temperaments as well as specific individual experiences. A “weak”
temperament is much more likely to be overwhelmed by traumas or a
chaotic
environment than is a “strong” one. On the other hand, a “strong”
temperament may nevertheless develop certain problems, given
strong-enough
trauma or chaotic-enough environment. To make things even more
complicated,
a weak temperament may be compensated for with strong learning
experiences,
or a strong temperament weakened with inadequate learning.

The autistic disorders

This understood, we can see autistic children and schizophrenic
adults
as people who have been driven back into an autistic perspective by the
complexities or violence of a reality they are not prepared,
temperamentally
or cognitively, to deal with. Their autistic view is not natural
to them, as it might be to an infant, in that they already have a
degree
of experience with the world, including social reality. It must
therefore
be supported by a defensive avoidance of difficult situations -- i.e.
of
situations that they paradoxically need to face and adapt to in order
to
progress beyond their autistic perspective.

We must always begin where the patient is. So, in the case of
the autistic or schizophrenic person, we must begin with their personal
reality and the defenses which they use to maintain it. In other
words, we must first take great pains to shelter them from perceptions
of danger. Only when they feel safe, in an often highly
simplified
environment, can we begin to gradually introduce the kinds of
complexities,
in watered down versions, in which they may find the differentiations
they
need to adapt and move out of their personal world. These
differentiations
cannot lead in any direct fashion to mature perspectives, but must only
be directed at an authoritarian world-view. Ironically, in order
to help schizophrenics, we must lead them towards conventionality!

Please keep in mind that this is not a theory of types and
categories!
“The autistic perspective” as well as “autism” and “schizophrenia”
should
really be used only with such quotes around them. They are
convenient
fictions to aid in communications, and should not be reified. In
reality, people perceive and behave in certain ways at certain
times
in certain places with certain others, and each person is a unique
entity
that defies consistent classification. Thus there are plenty of
“intermediate”
terms, such as the schizoid personality and paranoia, which
should
be made use of when we make diagnoses, and we must ultimately rely on
detailed
description and personal interaction to understand the individual.

The authoritarian disorders

The authoritarian neurotic is a person who retreats from the
complexity
of life into the authoritarian structures of a social reality.
Again,
the neurotic is not a child, nor a peasant in some traditional society,
so this authoritarian world-view must be supported by defensive
mechanisms
that help him or her to avoid full recognition of traumas and
chaos.
Because it is that very complexity that will lead them further towards
elaborative development, it is especially the neurotic who is
responding
to a chaotic environment who will be most broadly effected, while the
neurotic
responding to specific traumas may well develop further in domains not
tied to that of the trauma.

The authoritarian neurotic will tend to exhibit his or her rigid
sociality
in one of two ways: Depending on such factors as temperament,
upbringing,
and specific social situation, they will be either aggressive or
compliant.
Aggressive neurotics, predominantly men (due to both temperament and
upbringing),
tend to expect others to bend to their will, and are likely to be angry
and even violent if their expectations are not met. Compliant
neurotics,
predominantly women (again, due to both temperament and upbringing),
tend
to expect to yield to the will of others. They suffer from
sadness
and spend much of their cognitive time trying to adapt, i.e. trying
accept
into themselves changes that would be more efficiently accomplished by
changing others (most often, the aggressive males they keep company
with!).

But please notice that both aggressiveness and compliance change
depending
on the people you are interacting with: The aggressive man is
likely
to become quite compliant when faced with a clear social
superior;
the compliant woman is likely to be quite aggressive towards her
children
or servants. In a traditional society, these relations operate
quite
smoothly, with very little overt anger or sadness, and certainly
without
much sadism or masochism. Among neurotics, the defensive
mechanisms
change the anxiety that is at the root of the neurosis into anger or
sadness,
even to the point of sadism and masochism. As Freud pointed out,
these are just two sides of the same coin, which is the authoritarian
perspective.

To help someone grow out of their authoritarian perspective, one
must
begin with authority. It is these people that are most influenced
by the therapist’s status, and are particularly susceptible to
suggestion.
The point is to use authority to move the authoritarian beyond the
confines
of his or her rigid social reality, so that they might recognize the
variety
of perspectives possible. They are far from being ready to adopt
the non-closure attitudes of the epistemic, but they can learn
tolerance
of others and a habit of looking for the commonalities or the broader
view.
They must learn to reason independently of social categories, to stop
seeing
all issues as black and white, to entertain an experimental attitude
towards
their problems, and to see the complexities of issues -- i.e. to become
familiar with rationalistic, mechanistic, and cybernetic views, at
least
to the extent that they can move beyond their authoritarian
rigidity.
All this must occur within a very secure environment, one that does not
engage their defensive mechanisms.

The rationalistic disorders

When we come to the objectivist views, we find that the person has
already
dealt with much of the complexity of the world, and is in fact more
concerned
with integrating what he or she has learned. The rationalistic,
however,
does still face some chaos and trauma which might lead him or her to
fixate
at this perspective with defensive thoughts and behaviors.
Instead
of retreating into rigid social structures like the authoritarian
neurotic,
however, the rationalistic neurotic retreats into rigid personal
structures.

Rationalistic disorders can range from full-blown
obsessive-compulsive
to anxiety neurosis to compulsive personality, but is best represented
by the rather mild but enormously common personality type we could call
the perfectionist. Among the qualities perfectionists tend to
exhibit
are a love of order in their own lives, including neatness and
punctuality,
and a tendency to foist that order onto others, sometimes to the point
that they resemble authoritarian types, except that the order they
demand
is not so much society’s order, but an order that they feel they
themselves
best represent -- all this stemming, of course, from their fear of the
chaos they see on the horizon.

They may also appear rather narcissistic, especially to the degree
that
they consider themselves ideal specimens, but again that
narcissism
isn’t a true autistic one, but rather a defensive reaction to their
fears
and anxieties. The give-away that they are rationalistic, rather
than authoritarian or autistic, is that they consider their rigid
structures
universal rather than just social mores, while nevertheless being fully
aware of the reality of other ways of being. They love logic and
reasoning and tend to consider themselves supremely logical whether it
is among their talents or not, and consider the lack of logic to be the
major flaw of others.

I believe that the best way to help the perfectionist is to reason
with
him or her. By carefully introducing arguments that lead beyond
the
rationalistic approach, in such a way as to resolve the issues of chaos
that frighten them, they may come to terms with their fears. Some
of the approaches, such as Horney’s, Ellis’s, and Raimy's, that
emphasize
problems of thought or conception, might be more fruitful than others.

Beyond the rationalistic

Once we get beyond the rationalistic, we find ourselves on what we
might
want to see as a downward arc, involving a preference for integration
which
may even include a desire for problems, incongruities, paradoxes, and
chaos
as recognized aids to further development. But, while they are
less
likely to be frightened, they may very well become confused! We
can
look at Maslow’s long list of “metapathologies” for inspiration here,
or
at the literature of alienation.

The kinds of pathologies the mechanistic perspective leaves us most
open to are ones that can be traced from the mechanistic view’s
tendency
to reduce self to physiology, mind to brain, consciousness to
epiphenomenon,
values to tastes, morals to customs, and truth to opinion. The
feeling
that nothing is tied down, that nothing, including myself, is real,
that
the whole world is some kind of illusion -- i.e. depersonalization and
derealization -- is very common to this view. So is the sense
that
everything I do is meaningless, that not much of what I do has any
effect
anyway, and most especially that there is no right and wrong.
With
all values relative, perhaps the supreme symptom of mechanistic
unhappiness
is directionlessness.

The cybernetic perspective may suffer from the same difficulties as
the mechanistic, although it is less likely to have problems dealing
with
the complexities of reality in the first place. However, the
“neutral
monism” of information that the cybernetic view takes as fundamental is
even further removed from the richness of immediate experience than the
materialism of the mechanistic view. A complaint we may expect
from
the cybernetic person is one of emptiness or deadness and the desire to
return to a simpler but more sensuous mode of being. Fortunately,
with the cybernetic’s capacity for complexity, sensitivity to context,
and awareness of the place of the observer, as well as his or her
acceptance
of a cybernetic, self-guiding value system, it is more likely that the
cybernetic person will slip into the epistemic mode on their own.

The epistemic person is least likely to suffer from neuroses or
alienation,
but most likely to suffer from indecisiveness. One of the most
likely
pathologies at this level is withdrawal from society and a refusal to
be
involved. That this is a pathology can be seen in how this
contradicts
with other epistemic principles, such as responsibility towards others.

But the epistemic’s acceptance of the lack of closure also goes
against
our basic conservative nature: The mind, with all its
anticipation
and adaptation and elaboration of knowledge, is geared towards
“swallowing
the universe,” that is increasing comprehension of reality. It is
paradoxical, to say the least, that at the epistemic level, one must
give
up the possibility of this ideal in order to continue to satisfy our
need
to accomplish it!

Fortunately, the epistemic is so close to the final transcendent
perspective
that, even without the insights that transcendence implies, he or she
is
aware of their potential existence, and so is more likely than any
other
stage to be encouraged by problems rather than discouraged. The
problems
of the epistemic view are more likely founded in those other aspects of
a person that are fixated at lower levels, and not from the epistemic
view
itself.

At any of the perspectives beyond the rationalistic, a person with
problems
is likely to be best helped by a form of therapy that emphasizes their
freedom and responsibility, rather than one that demands the following
of rules or authority. These people have quite some resources
available
to them -- reason, habits of experiment, systems analysis,
phenomenological
observation -- that will serve them to solve their own problems in
their
own unique fashion, if they are only given encouragement and
support.
I would suggest that Kellian “homework” might be especially suitable
for
mechanistic people, systems therapies might be appropriate for
cybernetics,
and that pure Rogerian or existentialist approaches might be best for
epistemics,
but each of these suggestions is only that -- a suggestion.

In summary, then, pathology can be considered a matter of getting
“stuck”
on a curve of epistemological development due to trauma or chaotic
environment,
and therapy can be considered any technique that, beginning with the
client’s
present view of things, shelters them enough, supports them enough, and
encourages them enough to face the problems, resolve them, and begin to
move further in their own elaboration and self-actualization.

Societies

Societies do not have epistemologies; only individuals do. So
we should not expect our taxonomy to so neatly reflect societal
development
as it does personal development. We can, however, place societies
on the basis of the level of the mass of a society's people, or at
least
the level of the power-elite. Permit me to go out on a limb:

1. At the autistic level, we can only expect anarchy moderated
by instinct -- something I doubt has ever truly existed in the history
of human beings.

2. At the traditional level, we find a large number of
societies
that Sorokin (1937-1940) calls, perhaps euphemistically, familistic:
They
tend to be universalistic, have realistic conceptions of the corporate
"person" (i.e. the tribe, the state, the race...), tend to assume free
will, and take a cyclical view of history. Modern "isms" that
might
be so characterized include absolute monarchy and fascism.

3. At the rationalistic level (Sorokin calls them "mixed") we
might find constitutional monarchy and republicanism, as well as
capitalist
economics.

4. At the mechanistic level, we have what Sorokin call the
contractual:
Singularism predominates, as does a nominalistic conception of the
corporate
"person," a belief in determinism, and a progressive approach to
history.
Modern "isms" might include federalism, representational democracy, and
welfarism.

Beyond this point we run into a problem finding examples or even
conceptions.

5. Cybernetic societies, we might predict, should be slightly
less efficient and somewhat more person-oriented than the mechanistic
societies.
We might expect referential democracy, meritocracy (in the best sense),
and moderate socialism. Sorokin does mention "harmonism,"
including
a dialectic approach to history, as a higher synthesis of the
familistic
and the contractual.

6. At the epistemic level, we might expect a decentralized,
participatory
democracy and a "grass roots" capitalism (communism at its
best!).
As it should be considerably less efficient than the mechanistic, we
can
expect its arrival only when the world is safe from physical and
economic
aggression, and indeed only when others find it in themselves to
tolerate
such developments.

7. And, finally, the transcendental society would presumably
be
an anarchy in the most positive sense. I suspect this will
forever
remain an ideal.

All this said, it should still be understood that all the
perspectives,
if they are indeed in some way universals, should be represented in all
societies, from the most primitive to the most futuristic. Of
course,
the expression of each perspective will differ tremendously from
society
to society: The “mechanistic” in a primitive society may be
represented
by the practical, down-to-earth views of the village craftspeople, the
“epistemic” by the leadership skills of a chief, and the
“transcendental”
by the ritual of the shaman. And perhaps the rationalistic and
cybernetic
have little meaning for a pre-literate culture.

On the other hand, some of what makes today’s life difficult can
also
be understood: In a society as complex, pluralistic, and swiftly
changing as ours, it may become increasing difficult for many of us to
face and transcend the “chaos” of our lives. It is a serious
question,
I believe, whether more and more of us will suffer from alienation and
mental illness as we move into our future. I like to think that
speculating
on our psycho-social future in this way may help us deal with these
problems
successfully!